title: Making sense of agrobiodiversity, diet, and intensification of smallholder family farming in the Highland Andes of Ecuador.
abstract: Methods are needed for helping researchers and farmers to interactively describe and analyze local practices in search of opportunities for improving health, environment, and economy. The authors worked with smallholder family farmers in five Andean villages in Ecuador to apply participatory four-cell analysis (PFCA) in characterizing agrobiodiversity. Margelef and Shannon indices examined ecological richness and evenness, and a simplified 24-hour dietary recall characterized food consumption. Cross-analysis tested interactions among agrobiodiversity, farm size, and diet. Overall trends appeared to work against sustainable intensification, with notable heterogeneity and positive deviance found in the practices of relatively smaller enterprises, representing a potential resource for sustainable intensification. The suite of methods was determined useful for initiating researcher-farmer explorations of promising innovation pathways.
authors.affiliation: a EkoRural , Quito , Ecuador.
authors.forename: Pedro J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Oyarzun
authors.forename: Ross Mary
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Borja
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sherwood
authors.forename: Vicente
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Parra
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004032:Diet; D015930:Diet Records; D004484:Ecuador; D005190:Family; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors